Patient Satisfaction

We can define patient satisfaction as an individual’s perception or feelings about their healthcare experience: Was the care good? Did it meet their expectations? Were healthcare professionals polite and/or engaging? Was the healthcare delivered in a timely fashion?

It’s important to acknowledge that patient satisfaction is subjective, and that the interpretations of patient experience vs patient satisfaction between clinicians and individuals might differ because of these opinions. There are also universal truths that can be determined - people would rather be treated  without a long wait for care. People like being kept informed of their diagnosis and treatment processes. Communication and patient satisfaction go hand in hand. 

Why does patient satisfaction matter? 

• Engagement: Greater satisfaction leads to improved engagement and trust, which will enable a greater understanding of an individual’s condition and what’s needed to maintain wellbeing. Trust also encourages greater adherence to care plans.
• Better reputation: Positive experiences within healthcare can influence friends and family, encouraging them to engage more actively with services. A strong public image matters; positive word of mouth can amplify trust and engagement. 
• Staff morale: Happier patients means happier staff, as the environment and mood are more positive and less stressful.
• Feedback: Satisfied patients are more willing to engage, making it easier for healthcare providers to ascertain feedback regarding care delivery and services.
• Increased revenue: For private providers, higher satisfaction in any service encourages people to return, ultimately driving revenue growth.    

Improving patient satisfaction is the end goal, but first you need to measure it in order to assess what areas of service delivery are causing problems or are inconvenient. 

There are a few ways to do this.

Patient satisfaction survey

Patient satisfaction surveys are the most common way of identifying patient satisfaction. They’re direct, they’re engaging, and they’re relatively simplistic. They identify the most pressing or most common issues facing patients in their care journeys and give healthcare providers a starting point for addressing concerns and taking remedial action.

Service reviews and direct question/answer approaches can also provide similarly quick responses.

Patient Reported Experience Measures

Patient Reported Experience Measures or PREMs are an evaluation, via questionnaire, of how patient-centred care is, rather than outcomes. This means covering the issues of communication and respect and dignity, for example.

Patient Reported Outcome Measures

Patient Reported Outcome Measures or PROMs are the other side to PREMs in that they ascertain the clinical details about outcomes, a person’s health and wellbeing, their quality of life, and their experience through the care journey regarding diagnosis and treatment.

What is a good patient satisfaction score?

This is a subjective question asked by many, simply because there’s no universal metric for measuring patient satisfaction. One way to get a fairly simple rating is the Net Promoter Score (NPS) which is a simple query about how likely an individual is to recommend the service or provider to others.
Providers should build up their own data bank of patient satisfaction scores and ratings over time, so they can establish their own baseline for performance and track progress – or regression, but they could also consider peer comparison with neighbouring services, facilities, Trusts, or even broader groups like an ICB in the UK in order to get a sense of what they should be aiming to achieve.

6 ways to digitally improve Patient Satisfaction

Once you’ve received patient feedback and know your challenges, you then need to improve patient satisfaction. There are nine immediate ways to do this:

1. PROMs & PREMs: Patients will feel a greater degree of satisfaction and trust if their clinician(s) are swift in following up after consultation or treatment to gauge their wellbeing. 
2. Patient Engagement Portals: With the help of patient portals, individuals can be given control over their appointments, access to their records, and the opportunity to engage with healthcare surveys.  
3. Access Intelligent Care Platform: AICP provides a holistic, unified view of an individual’s health and care, this helps enhance visibility of patient needs whilst removing the need for patients to repeat their story. This also increases the actionability to treat patients and benefits communication – all to reduce wastage, to reduce waiting lists, and to speed up treatment times. 
4. Virtual Consultations: Patients often prefer the comfort of home to health and care settings. Virtual appointments can help those who struggle to travel, those with issues in busy social spaces, or those for whom the next appointment is inconvenient due to work or childcare, for example.
5. Hospital At Home: Virtual Wards are quickly becoming a popular alternative to keeping people on hospital wards, and digital kit for remote patient monitoring is helping to alleviate the burden on crowded hospitals and reduce stress for patients who could recover just as easily – if not more comfortably – in a home setting with their own comforts.
6. Elemental: Community and wellbeing referrals create new possibilities for Trusts, ensuring patients receive personalised, holistic support for their non-clinical needs. Individuals are connected to their local community and wellbeing services to be supported in managing their conditions whilst waiting for treatment. In some cases, patients find their needs met without escalating to clinical services, enabling early intervention and reducing demand on clinical services.  

These areas of change should be placed into an action plan to improve patient satisfaction and set out a timeframe within which changes should be made. Such a document should state who is responsible for said changes and who will have oversight of these efforts to ensure adherence - to provide support and/or guidance. 

To achieve high patient satisfaction requires active engagement from the healthcare provider. Healthcare providers should always be striving to deliver the very best care possible, and going directly to the patients and asking their opinions goes a long way to achieving that goal. 

The NHS 10-Year Plan, citing the Darzi Report, highlights that public satisfaction with the NHS is the lowest on record, with millions waiting for treatment, population health deteriorating, and the knock-on effect of economic impact by impeding the workforce. 

The government plans to push hard to boost patient satisfaction, and one such measure is to introduce rankings to the NHS app. The My NHS GP tool will provide patient satisfaction scores so that individuals seeking care can make more informed decisions about which service providers to use based on these scores, waiting times, best outcomes, and distance to travel.

It’s not just about surveying patients to find out what they like and don’t like though, as much as that is beneficial. You have to be willing to change culture and working habits to ensure that the issues raised as being problematic can be stamped out, and that patients truly believe in the clinicians and services they are utilising.